The Bechdel Cast - Body Double with Shereen Lani Younes

Episode Date: July 28, 2022

This week, Caitlin, Jamie, and special guest Shereen Lani Younes leer through a telescope at the movie Body Double. (This episode contains spoilers) For Bechdel bonuses, sign up for our Patreon at patreon.com/bechdelcast. Follow @sheerohero666 on Twitter. While you're there, you should also follow @BechdelCast, @caitlindurante and @jamieloftusHELP.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Daphne Caruana Galizia was a Maltese investigative journalist who on October 16th 2017 was assassinated. Crooks Everywhere unearthed the plot to murder a one-woman WikiLeaks. She exposed the culture of crime and corruption that were turning her beloved country into a mafia state. Listen to Crooks Everywhere on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. To listen to new episodes one week early and 100% ad-free, subscribe to the iHeart True Crime Plus channel, available exclusively on Apple Podcasts. Kay hasn't heard from her sister in seven years. I have a proposal for you. Come up here and document my project.

All you need to do is record everything like you always do. What was that? That was live audio of a woman's nightmare. Can Kay trust her sister? Or is history repeating itself? There's nothing dangerous about what you're doing. They're just dreams. Dream Sequence is a new horror thriller

from Blumhouse Television, iHeartRadio, and Realm. Listen to Dream Sequence on the iHeartRadio app, They're just dreams. 40th season, y'all, and we are coming along for the ride. Woo-hoo! That would be me, Devin Simone. And then there's me, Davon Rogers. And we're here to take you behind the scenes of the Challenge 40 Battle of the Eras. Join us as we break down each episode, interview challengers, and take you behind the scenes

of this iconic season. Listen to MTV's official Challenge podcast on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, listeners. We wanted to provide a content warning for this episode because the movie, as well as our discussion, involves things like stalking, spousal abuse, physical assault, and violence toward women, just so everyone is aware. Enjoy the episode! On the Bechdel cast, the questions asked if movies have women in them.

Are all their discussions just boyfriends and husbands or do they have individualism? The patriarchy's effin' vast. Start changing it with the bechdel cast jamie caitlin take a look into my telescope okay and observe from a distance the movie body double and how it asks us to be empathetic toward a protagonist who is okay we're starting negative a creep really negative we're coming in yeah freezing cold it's i'm sorry i can't stop looking at so my my dog is here right now i want to just say at the top first of all welcome to the bexel cast welcome second of all you know this this movie is going to be an interesting chat third of all sunny's here and i got him a couple tennis

balls because i'm a you know i'm you're a good mommy i just like to give him things but they're squeaky i didn't realize they were squeaky and he wouldn't stop barking at me until i gave him all four so there might be some squeaks he's he has them all he's arranged them into a little diamond and he just keeps looking at them lustfully. Whoa. And then occasionally he'll pick one up in his mouth and squeak it and then put it back and then rearrange the diamond formation. It's kind of sick and perverted.

It's because I showed him body double. Well, I was going to say, I mean, speaking of looking at things lustfully. Yeah, I know. He learned it. He said, I learned it from my boy De Palma. Horrifying. Okay. Welcome to the Bechdel cast. My name is Jamie Loftus. My name is Caitlin Durante. And this is our show where we examine movies through an intersectional feminist lens.

And we use the Bechdel test simply as a jumping off point to inspire a larger conversation about philum. Phlim. Phlims. If you will will what is the bechdel test though jamie i forget well the bechdel test is a movie or no it's a it's a oh my god it's a media metric created by queer cartoonist allison bechdel sometimes called the bechdel wallace test lots of versions of it ours uh requires that two people of a marginalized gender speak to each other about something other than a man for more than two lines of dialogue at very least. And they must have names in the end. And it should mean that should be a meaningful interaction. Can I give a quick anecdote example? Please. There is a really annoying Twitter joke that is recycled every time a new movie comes out where

they're like i'm sorry to report like top gun maverick does not pass the bechdel test and it gets five trillion likes every time and it's never funny and it annoys me and it particularly annoyed me yesterday when someone recycled that joke yet again to say minions rise of grue does not pass the bechdel test now listen i went to went to see Minions Rise of Gru last night, opening night, and it does pass the Bechdel test. So not only have we been saying for years it's a flawed metric to begin with and plenty of incredible movies do not pass the Bechdel test,

but it is a good jumping off point for discussion perhaps. Minions did pass the Bechdel test between Julie Andrews and Taraji P. Henson and if that's not a super pass I don't know what fucking is tell me about it oh my god so that's the show um and today we are talking about a a pretty popular request um that we've gotten over the years many times it's a Brian De Palma movie called Body Double. It came out in 1984. It's a neo-noir erotic thriller.

And people have been saying it's sexist since it came out. And if something is sexist in 1984, I'm very excited to talk about it now. Yes. And we have an incredible returning guest. Wait, is this a three? Is this a four? I think your third time aladdin speed was there something in between there was something in between i think i think

this might be four i just can't remember the other one maybe three i don't know i don't know time aladdin speed and body double is a is a pretty solid genre spread too yeah well let's introduce you properly uh they are a filmmaker half of the podcast ethnically ambiguous it's shereen lani yunes welcome back thanks for having me i have been curious about this movie for so long so i was glad to have a reason to watch it um it was i don't know what i was expecting because i don't like knowing anything about a movie before i jump in like i know i want to see it but i just will not look anything up about it so it was a ride i did not know what i was getting into it was uh so you had never seen this before no no okay i was fascinated about like what if you had a history with it i've just always heard

about are you like a diploma fan i mean not necessarily i think he's like he's not untalented i think he's yeah he makes it clear especially in this movie that he's just horny all the time but but i just like the the poster is also really like erotic and like i've just heard so much about this movie for some reason like maybe on letterbox and stuff i always saw it pop up and i was like what is this and then someone described it as um the hottest thriller of the 80s or the sexiest thriller of the 80s so i was like that piqued my interest but uh but yeah i don't have any history with it other than being just like very curious about it and now i know me either i had never seen this movie either it was like vaguely on my radar.

But I will say that erotic thrillers are one of my least favorite genres. So I never seek them out. And Brian De Palma, I'm not a fan. There, I said it. I don't like really any of his movies. We've covered, weirdly, we've covered two De Palma movies on this show before. We've covered Mission Impossible 1 and we've covered Carrie. But he also did Scarface.

The Untouchables. Oh, I do like Blowout. Oh, I've never seen that. Me either. John Travolta. It's maybe my favorite John Travolta performance. I would recommend Blowout. Out of all the De Palma movies, I would recommend. Even over Face Off, which I think is John Travolta's. Wait, recommend Blowout out of all the De Palma movies I would

recommend even over Face Off which I think is oh my god wait is that a De Palma movie no no no but that's John Travolta giving a yeah yeah yeah oh yes yes Face Off is closest I've ever come to converting to Scientology easily you're just like um maybe he's got a point because I love that movie it's one of my top five movies of all time. I love that movie. Oh, my gosh. But I would recommend, maybe second then. I would recommend it for his second best performance, Blowout.

It's like a... In that movie, I'm like, oh, he's a good actor. You know what I mean? Mm-hmm. But anyway. So, Caitlin, you had not seen it before. I had not. Had you?

I had not. No. I think we all kind of had a similar experience where I've been hearing about this movie for years. And I just sort of wasn't in a rush to see it. Honestly, the main selling point for me on this movie was I really like Melanie Griffith. And I am always down to see Melanie Griffith in a movie. Yes. And I thought she did a great job.

And I'm always just like sometimes seeing Melanie Griffith in like movies in the 80s. You're just like we're not giving her the material that she needs and it took a generation and now her daughter Dakota Johnson is doing a lot of incredible work that Melanie Griffith should have had access to as well anyways some of the only good nepotism in the world as far as I'm concerned like that legacy agree amazing agree but I I knew that this movie had been controversial for a really long time and I Sonny that is really enough but but I didn't I don't know I didn't know any of like Shireen like similar deal I didn't know the plot I didn't know anything i didn't know that it starred a

bill maher doppelganger that was really distracting it is so distracting especially with his hair slicked back when he was like playing the producer person with his hair slicked back that's that's bill maher why is i mean i don't know anything about this guy he's been he's been nominated for golden globe like wow god bless good for craig watson who's that i mean look we don't know nominated for Golden Globe. Like, God bless. Good for Craig Wasson. Who's that? I mean, look, we don't know. He could be a terrific guy. We don't know.

The point is, he looks exactly like someone despicable. And it's like really distracting. Despicable me? Shout out to our Despicable Me episode on the Matreon. You guys, I loved Rise of Gru so much it was so funny i there they made a joke about la guardia airport that was the minions essentially look they fly a plane in this one and it's so funny okay we have to we cannot get into the minions so i hadn't i i'm like kind of ambivalent towards de palma i think that like his place in like movie history is kind of interesting because he's

like grouped in with all those famous 70s directors and he's kind of one of the less discussed of them. Like the whatever Scorsese. Still quite discussed. He's still very discussed, but I feel like it's not. Well, I don't want to dump it in too much, but like I feel like it's like it's not discussed because his movies are are so fucking awesome. Sure.

He's just disgust. Yeah. I liked Carrie. I haven't revisited our episode or the movie in a while, but I mean, Carrie really stuck with me when I was younger. I remember enjoying Phantom of the Paradise, but I watched it when I was sick a couple of years ago. And other than that, I kind of don't have a... And then, you know, Mission Impossible, sure, why not? not scarface you ever see scarface yes i've not seen scarface that's one of my like right up there with i've not seen a single godfather and like scarface is something

that we will have to cover eventually and i dread the day well we cover Scarface. He made Scarface right before Body Devil, which is really interesting to me because they feel completely different. Well, also, he didn't write Scarface. No, he didn't. No, I just realized as I was talking, for Body Devil, it said story by De Palma and then he wrote it with someone else.

But this movie is, I mean, the music, first of all, very dramatic, like peeping music. Like every time you see that you saw the telescope, it was like this ethereal weird music. And then like there was just it was the music kind of scared me at times. I was not expecting so much like it was manipulative. Yeah. Yeah.

I didn't like this movie. And I like, no, that's OK. I didn't like it. And it was like, it's weird, too, because it was like one of it's that's okay i didn't like it and it was like it's weird too because it was like one of those movies that has been so like people didn't like when they came out and they're like this is a weird hitchcock ripoff that is like even worse to women somehow and people and then that was it for a while and then people were trying to like reclaim it they're like no it's commentary and then i'm like, I couldn't get there.

It's like horny Hitchcock. Right. And it's like Hitchcock also famously not a good person. Right. I've got some quotes for after we do the recap. But like I just was sort of because this movie has undergone so many like rounds of analysis and like some people have, I think like, you know, whatever, like think whatever you want, but like tried to reclaim it as like,

this movie is commentary on voyeurism. It's not just voyeurism. And I looked to see if De Palma had ever like given an interview to try to make that same case. And he sort of like did not at all. He's like, that's, this is what happens in movies.

Like, bye. You know? And so we'll we'll get to like the exact particulars of what he has said about the movie but i just yeah uh looking for his thoughts on this movie didn't really change my opinion of it in any way i just i thought it would be honestly because it's been talked about so much i thought it would be better like i thought it would be better than it was and that's why i asked to watch it because i was like oh finally this reason to watch this long ass movie that i've heard so much about it's probably decent let's go and i will say i think it was i'm glad we watched it because there are a few lines that

might be like my favorite lines in cinema of all time that i just can't stop thinking about there's like which ones when he's in the acting class and the guy is like you are a baby and you're afraid and you must act and then he goes i can't i'm a sardine like i just lost it like it was the stupidest line i've ever heard in my entire life i can't i'm a sardine uh and then she's like you are a baby and i was like i hear that i feel that in my bones i mean but other than that i mean i also love melanie griffith i really i think she also deserved more just to be not as sexualized and not as just like pigeonholed as she was but also yeah she's like top build but she doesn't come into the movie until like an hour or more yeah but it's

also like who are you gonna top bill craig wesson who the fuck is that who so okay should i well let's take a quick break first and then we'll get into the recap Defne Caruana Galizia was a Maltese investigative journalist who on October 16, 2017, was murdered. There are crooks everywhere you look now. The situation is desperate. My name is Manuel Delia. I am one of the hosts of Crooks Everywhere, a podcast that unhearts the plot to murder a one-woman Wikileaks.

Daphne exposed the culture of crime and corruption that were turning her beloved country into a mafia state. And she paid the ultimate price. Listen to Crooks Everywhere on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. To listen to new episodes one week early and 100% ad-free, subscribe to the iHeart True Crime Plus channel, available exclusively on Apple Podcasts.

I felt too seen. Dragged. I'm NK, and this is Basket Case. So I basically had what back in the day they would call a nervous breakdown. I was crying and I was inconsolable. It was just very big, sudden swaps of different meds. What is wrong with me? Oh, look at you giving me therapy, girl. Finally, a show for the mentally ill girlies.

On Basket Case, I talk to people about what happens when what we call mental health is shaped by the conditions of the world we live in. Because if you haven't noticed, we are experiencing some kind of conditions that are pretty hard to live with. But if you struggle to cope, the society that created the conditions in the first place will tell you there's something wrong with you. And it will call you a basket case. Listen to Basket Case every Tuesday on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. 24 hours. BPM 110, 120. She's terrified. Should we wake her up?

Absolutely not. What was that? You didn't figure it out? I think I need to hear you say it. That was live audio of a woman's nightmare. This machine is approved and everything? You're allowed to be doing this? We passed the review board a year ago.

We're not hurting people. There's nothing dangerous about what you're doing. They're just dreams. Dream Sequence is a new horror thriller from Blumhouse Television, iHeartRadio, and Realm. Listen to Dream Sequence on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts and we are back and should we get into the recap and go from there yeah let's do it okay so body double we meet jake scully played by craig watson which okay first of all avatar jake su Sully, body double Jake Scully. Yeah.

Distracting. I was like, for a moment, I was like, is that Sully's name in Monsters, Inc.? And then it's not. Sully has a different first name. Because it sounded familiar. James Sullivan. Yeah. Yeah.

And then I was like, but who's Jake Sully? And then I didn't investigate further. But yes, Jamie, you're right. Look, we don't have time to get into avatar right now and we will be covering it later in the year it's a complicated film with a bizarro fucking history but jake sully like and they say his name five trillion times yeah they do that's like arguably the only thing i remember is the tail scene and the fact that there's a character named Jake Sully. Jake Sully.

So Jake Scully. Jake Scully. That's on James Cameron. Yeah, he should have not named his character basically the same thing. But we meet Jake Scully. He is an actor in Hollywood. Ever heard of it? He goes to an iconic hot dog stand that no longer exists at the beginning of the movie called taylor the pup okay whose history i cover in my hot dog book oh nice it's like that hot dog

shaped building at the beginning of the movie and it's been moved to like yeah yeah it still exists but they just like moved the building to like a storage unit but it's still around oh there's just not hot dogs in it anymore anyways wow la history. L.A. history. We were talking about L.A. history a lot in Speed, too. That's true. Yeah. I mean, they're a little bit cringe sometimes, but I do appreciate like a very, not appreciate, I think those meta movies, like you're suddenly on a movie set. I think those are kind of funny.

You know what I mean? Where they're like the hired crew to be filmed by the crew. I just think that's like very funny to me for some reason. Yeah. So this was the opening to this was entertaining. I was like, Oh yeah. I've never seen that before.

Barney's beanery. Hello. Because what happens is, so we meet Jake Scully when he is in the middle of filming a take for a vampire movie where he is the vampire and he's in a coffin but he freezes and can't act because we'll learn that he has claustrophobia so he's struggling with that we then see jake out of his vampire makeup and it is now clear that he is a dead ringer for Bill Maher. And again, it's very distracting. Which I don't even know if that was a person at the time.

Like, I know he's alive, but I don't even think he was famous when this movie came out. So that just sucks for Craig. Sorry, Craig. So Jake goes home and walks in on his girlfriend having sex with another man. And he is devastated. And he now needs somewhere else to stay. He tries to carry on with his life. We see him at interviews, auditions, we see him at acting class. And then he meets and befriends this guy named Sam, who has a place for him to stay because sam has been house sitting for a friend this rich guy i think also in the movie business in the picture business he's got one of

my favorite movie props ever the like bed that spins around oh yeah it's good yeah so also i looked it up the elevated circularvated Circular House. It's a house called, what was it called? The Chemosphere. And it's in LA. It was designed by John Lautner in 1960. And it's like this like private historic thing. I thought that was so interesting.

Just like the spaceship in the hills. Does it still exist? Yeah, it's still there. It's a one story octagon on the San Fernando Valley side of the Hollywood Hills off of Mulholland. It's just sitting there. Let's go. Field trip. That's wild. I sort of assumed it was like a model.

I don't know. I just was like, that doesn't exist. And I didn't ask any more questions. That's wild. It was declared an LA historical cultural monument in 2004. That's cool. Yeah, that's the vibe. But I thought it was declared an la historical cultural monument in 2004 that's cool yeah that's the vibe but i thought it was very interesting there's like a what's it called like a little trolley that even brings you up to the house i've never seen that in my life yeah i know i'm like does that whoever lives there has to go on a little roller coaster trolley ride every time they want

to go home yeah it was wild that is terrifying. You're like, oh, that's very exciting. But then also when you're going up to a place like that, you're like, oh, this is where I die. Like this is, you know. There's no coming down. But no one dies in that house. They die in other houses. No, they die in other houses.

So Sam has been house sitting for a friend who lives in this house. But Sam is about to go out of town for this five week gig he has. So he arranges for Jake to stay at this place while Sam is gone so Sam shows Jake around the house and he points out this telescope in the house with a view of a neighbor woman who dances all naked and sexy every night at the same time and jake is like awooga and he spies on her for a really long time it's all foamy and the music is the music loud the peeping music is so disturbing like because it's so happy right because it's like oh la la isn't this so awesome that he's spying on her yeah exactly i've like

seen arguments that like they're like oh i guess that like de palma was accused of ripping off hitchcock quite a bit because he did do that like it was because he did it i mean this movie is literally rear window plus and vertigo like vertigo yeah exactly but hornier but like some people have made the argument that they're like okay he had been he had been received this criticism for so long that he's like i'm gonna triple down and make it like i'm gonna make the the worst movie ever um i, yeah, I, like, read a whole piece on The Independent that was, like, body double is De Palma's ultimate troll. Which, to me, I, like, saw what he was saying. But I was also, like, um, but sometimes you just make a movie that sucks.

And it's not, like, a game of 4D chess. I mean, yeah, in retrospect, it's probably, like, you can say anything. You're being a troll. You know, if something sucks, you can be, like, I was trolling like that's a good cop out yeah if you're called out on something that's my plan i'm just like yeah when i when i make something that fucking flops i'm like yeah that was that was supposed to did i make you think i did that on purpose yeah exactly exactly right okay so he spies on this neighbor woman for a really long time. And then later that night, he watches her again. But this time, he sees a man in the room movie because the director doesn't want to deal with his claustrophobia. So he's even more down on his luck.

And then that night, he spies on the neighbor woman again, doing her sexy naked dance. And it's the same naked dance every night. Every night, always at midnight. The same show. dance every night every night always at midnight you do get context for later but it is just so confusing to me that the character of like he's just like so he's he is a sardine essentially because he just like isn't asking questions that you need to be even as like a perverted sex criminal he's not asking very obvious questions such as why is it the same routine every day like yeah oh yeah i mean i won't get into like the actual plot but i do think it's

very funny that the plot rides on him being a creep like you know what i mean like he had to have started this all because he the person knew he would look at her like that's that's the whole plan rides on this guy like proving that he's a creep i just think that's and it goes off like nobody's business and also i feel like it also rides on and it's like this i don't disagree with this necessarily but like also him being very certain that he's not a creep yes which is true of many creeps right just like underwear in his pocket i'm not a creep i'm a political activist right there's like i'm a good guy i was protecting her and then the detective who i'm like are we supposed

to agree with the detective because i have a whole thing about that yeah yeah i thought the same thing i was like for the first time are cops making a good point and then but i think the movie thinks no but yeah we'll get into that it's a little ambiguous yeah so he's watching jake sully's slash scully is watching the woman do her naked dance the same exact routine as before and this time he notices another creepy guy watching her from a distance as well. The next day Jake runs into the neighbor woman on the street. They're like both at an intersection or they're in their cars and he sees the creepy guy from the night before also stalking this woman. So Jake follows the woman presumably to like keep an eye on her and like try to keep her safe question mark. And she goes to this shopping center. He watches her go into a store,

peeps at her while she's trying on a pair of underwear. And meanwhile, the creepy guy is still stalking her also. So Jake's kind of keeping an eye on both her and this other stalker Jake then gets into an elevator with her wait hold on before they get in the elevator the first I believe the first line a woman has in the whole movie is a woman calling security on Jake yes I think it's like it's like over a half hour into the movie because we've seen many women at this point we've spent we spent minutes at a time lingering on this dance routine we see like there's a lot of Jake looking I mean the whole movie is Jake looking at women and that's obviously on purpose but even when he catches his girlfriend cheating on him she just

like stares at him of like oh yikes unfazed yeah right and then and then he just leaves so she doesn't even get a line of dialogue and then yeah the first time you hear a woman speak it is to call security on him for being a peeping tom on gloria while she's getting changed in a fucking dressing room. But also protecting her. You're like, what? She leaves an enormous gap in the curtain of the dressing room, just like in the middle of it. And it's like, that's not a choice that anyone makes. Well, yeah, it's like the way that the characters are written in this movie are like completely irrational. But like, yeah yeah i did think it

was funny that it takes a half hour for a woman to speak and then it's just like we need to get this guy out of here there's not a single crew member who's female or talks there's not a single any even side character women voices and i think uh because you see the woman in the store interact with the person he's stalking for like a minute and but you don't hear the conversation so i was like if we heard the conversation maybe this would pass the test but no maybe not just talking about underwear we're watching we're watching the creepiest guy alive observing them having a conversation yeah while staring at them oh this movie is so bizarre um yeah yeah don't love it i hate it um okay so jake so he's like kind of following and keeping an eye on everyone he then gets into an elevator with her

but oh no his claustrophobia uh and then she throws her old pair of underwear away after she's bought this new pair no no wait i thought it was the new pair oh she throws away the old one i think so because she wears the new one out of the store and she puts the old pair in the bag oh yeah he was it was a sniffing situation so he he takes her old underwear out of the trash and i do think he smells it yeah and i mean not to kink shame but he i was gonna say but it's like but she you can't do that you can't it was in the trash you can't steal someone's underwear from them without them knowing yes so he takes her underwear out of the trash and then he follows her to the beach spies on her there eavesdrops on her phone conversations and then jake sees the

creepy guy again the other sorry the other creepy guy yeah he gets so close there I was talking to Caleb about this over text yesterday where like in that scene where like he's watching her from like the tents on the beach and then she looks at him and the music swells as if to be like she does notice him and you're like oh my god what's going on and then two seconds later because honestly i did struggle to like pay attention to this movie it's really hard i kept kind of getting distracted because there's all these long lingering shots where it's like creepy and nothing is happening right so i looked down at my phone for 10 seconds and then i looked up again and he was like standing right behind her and she had no idea this is a yet another example of like object of protagonist desire has no spatial awareness

for plot reasons it's so frustrating situation yeah so so he's on the beach now he's stalking this woman whose name we will learn is gloriavelle pretty soon. He's doing exactly what the other creepy guy is doing, which is also stalking her. But Jake catches up to her and he's like, someone's following you. And she's like, I know. And he's like, but it's not me. And it's like, yes, it is. And also it's someone else. And just then the other creepy guy grabs her purse and runs off.

So Jake chases after him, but the guy runs into a tunnel and Jake can't keep going because of his claustrophobia. So the guy takes something out of the purse. We're not sure what yet. And then he runs off. So then the woman catches up, Gloria catches up with Jake and then they start making out for a while.

He just kisses her for a while. It's uncomfortable. It's also like it looks like it makes me uncomfortable, but they also look uncomfortable. She looks uncomfortable, in my opinion. Because she's saying, no, no, yes, no, yes, no, not here. Because she's like into it, we're supposed to think, for a while. And then she's like, but no, I can't, not here. And then she's like but no i can't not here and then she runs off i kept waiting

for that to be revealed to have been like a fantasy right of jake's especially like the more it's completely irrational when it happens but then as the plot goes on and it becomes this whole like bizarro conspiracy hollywood something blah blah blah like it makes less and less sense the more you know because the more you know the more you're like how does gloria even know this guy exists like half the time he was peeping on her it wasn't even her like it's so bizarre that she would want anything to do with this guy yeah i kept waiting for it to be like the whole thing's a dream but she's just so horny but like that's the thing yeah every woman in this movie is so ready to have sex which no judgment on that but it doesn't not with jake scully like why does she make out with him when he just like starts kissing it like that didn't make and like you said i thought it was

gonna be a fantasy because there are other moments in the movie where he seems to be fantasizing about something but like it turns out not to be a fantasy they actually kissed on the beach and for some reason she was into it for a while she runs off eventually it's so like the camera angle on that scene where it's like yeah spinning around them it's supposed to be really like sweeping romantic yeah and like so again i feel like even the camera work and the music is leading you to believe that this isn't actually happening but then it just was i thought so too but then it just was confusing bad filmmaking okay that night jake spies on gloria in her home again with the telescope and he sees the other creepy guy in her house now so he tries to call her and warn her

he runs to her house to help her but the creepy guy attacks gloria with a large power drill and kills her jake breaks into her house to save her but it's too late she has been murdered i guess the power drill thing is a thing in scarface as well and so everyone was just like okay brian de palma is obsessed with power drills i don't remember that but it's also been like over 15 years since i've seen scarface i'm realizing i don't like crime syndicate movies. I find them very boring. But we will cover The Godfather someday on this show because I think it would be funny.

Yeah. Well, yeah, someday. We cut to the cops at the scene of the crime and we meet Detective McLean who questions Jake and he's like, you're the only witness and also you're a peeping tom and a pervert and i can see gloria's underwear in your pocket right now and kind of what that whole scene we were talking about a little earlier but you're like first of all it's disorienting because the

cop appears to be correct right right yeah but also we're not supposed to like brian de palma's like a cab the one time a cop is correct it's like so yeah exactly also in that scene i feel like this is it just feels very 1980s that in that scene and also very now but like particularly with like the mask offness about it the detective correctly says like peeping is against the law he could have like he's like i'm not gonna hold you he said he says sexual harasser or like sexual something like he said like uh you're a sexual whatever he said but the guy was like no i'm not he calls him a sex offender i think a sex offender that's what it is and he's right yeah he's like but i can't i can't hold you i'm like but you literally can you just correctly stated the crime he's

committing and then later on when like jake calls him back and is like talking of his fucking q anon bullshit the detective is like oh it's if it isn't hollywood's biggest sex offender and i'm like just arrest him like what are you yeah anyways i just think at every turn at every turn jake makes it increasingly harder to root for him. You know what I mean? Like he's not really someone. For sure. It's just in the beginning, you're like, oh, I feel bad.

This guy got cheated on right in front of his face. And then you as the more you go on, you're just like, oh, he's terrible. Yeah, I have a whole thing about that. So the cop is questioning jake and this is when they start referring to the creepy stalker killer guy as the indian yeah because he appears to be an indigenous man i didn't even think about that the first thing i noticed about the creepy guy is that they made him very ugly like like his face was like melting off and so i thought it was funny like oh they're making the evil guy ugly surprise surprise but then to call him like

an indian was so random to me i was like what that's what you were going for this whole time like a tan leathery man right it almost felt like the movie telegon itself because i agree with you like they like it's an extremely offensive thing to say and also i was like if they hadn't said that i never in a million years would have guessed that that was what exactly they had been going for so it makes it like twice as bad yeah and then it's like a fucking horror movie prosthetic i need spoiler alert but like you don't have to watch this movie right so so we learned that then we see jake watching porn and he sees because like the movie then just is like well this murder happened let's have jake watch porn yeah like what to get over it just console himself right

because he loves people he loves peeping. He loves watching. So he sees a performer named Holly Boddy, played by Melanie Griffith, doing the exact same sexy dance in the porn film as Gloria was doing in her house while Jake was peeping on her. And he's like, wait a minute. Why is that the same dance? So he goes and tries to get close to holly which he does by auditioning for a porn role opposite holly he gets the part they do a scene together and then jake pretends to be this rich porn producer and he acts like he wants to cast holly in his movie and again

he's really starting to look like bill Maher at this point. As you mentioned earlier, Shereen. It's starting to get pretty disturbing. And it's also like, I don't know. Jake sucks so bad as a character. But once he got to the point where he was pretending to, I was like, what is even his end game? What is he doing? The movie got so confusing for me at this point. Because I like could not

follow the jump between this murder and then suddenly he's like i'm a porn actor now i'm like i couldn't follow his motive like why is he doing that i didn't understand at first and also i hated i really hated that they made him like into a good lover because like she was like really into it and just like i really disliked that but yeah he also gets like 10 shades darker when he becomes this hollywood producer which i think is really weird it's but like a tan like a hollywood tan yeah he keeps getting creepier and creepier yeah so he's like i want to put you in my movie i also want to hire you for a private performance so she goes to this place where he's been staying and then he's like by the way i'm not

a porn producer there's no movie that i'm trying to cast you in what i need to know is did someone hire you to dance in the house across the way and she reluctantly tells him yes it was her dancing and that sam is the guy who hired her to put on this little show, knowing Jake would be watching it through the telescope. So Jake starts to piece together that Sam set up Jake to be the witness to this murder. He wanted Jake to watch the neighbor woman and hired Holly Boddy to be a body double for Gloria. And that basically Sam, whose real name is Alexander Ravel, AKA Gloria's,

his wife or no, her husband, he, he wanted to kill his wife, Gloria. So he made sure Jake witnessed someone else committing the murder so that no one would suspect alexander ravel wild that this all kind of works out for him yeah yeah right yeah truly so jake is figuring all of this out but holly is pissed that jake lied to her and lured her there under false pretenses so she storms out but oh no she

gets abducted by the creepy guy the murderer so jake goes after her to save her and then he comes upon them in a reservoir that the creepy guy is digging a grave to dump holly body into how did they how did he find him how did they how did he get there he was like running on foot from the cops i right and suddenly he knows where they are i don't know i don't know that is a plot hole so but he finds them and jake scuffles with the murderer um and he turns out to be sam aka alexander revell wearing a mask of apparently an indigenous person, because again, they keep calling him the Indian, but he's wearing this fake prosthetic mask that Jake rips off of him,

and it's revealed that he is Sam, a.k.a. Alexander Revelle, and that he had just been wearing this mask every time that we saw that character. It's so confusing. So then Jake ends up in the grave. He can't get out because of his claustrophobia but then he has this like fantasy about how he's back on the set of the vampire movie and he's able to overcome his claustrophobia in that moment and he's able to get out of the grave but then alexander's dog attacks. There's also a very anti-dog agenda in this movie that I did not appreciate. Every dog.

And also, if you read the movie correctly, it is a good dog agenda because all the dogs are like, let's kill Jake Scully. Let's get him. Let's get rid of him. Dogs know things. Yes. But the dog knocks the bad guy into the the water at the reservoir and then jake helps holly out of the grave and the dog dies with him right the dog is just in the water now maybe dead yeah nice um and then jake helps holly out of the grave but she's like you're sick you're

a necrophiliac and then she gets back into the grave and then just sits there and he's like fine stay in there if you want you know though that's how you know you've really found a vile person if you're like i would rather literally hang up in this grave yeah then go to safety with you yeah so goodbye and that's how the scene ends yeah like that's how the scene ends he's like are you gonna stay in there forever and then right and then we cut away it's like maybe yeah and then we cut away to jake on set of the vampire movie he has apparently been hired back to play the part and they're shooting a scene where the woman who is in the scene with him has a body double for the shots of her breasts so just when you thought there couldn't be any more male gaze cinematography in this movie the movie ends with just a long shot

of the body doubles bare breasts the longest so the longest shot on a boob i've ever seen in a movie ever truly and then the body double and the the actor in this scene who's playing opposite jake is being murdered actively by this vampire that jake is playing so that's how the movie ends and we're like woohoo i do think it's funny as a vampire he has blonde slicked back hair so i think it's even more kind of bill maury but but with better makeup. But I also think you skipped over something. There was a scene that I had to replay, but it's the musical on the set of the porn shoot. Yes.

There's like suddenly relaxed by what's, I don't know who it's, it just starts blasting. And it's the band. It's the band who sings the song. It is so funny. Maybe one of the only parts that i did like yeah i like that part i was like whoa porn musical okay i'm down but it's also confusing because because you realize

that it's part of the porn movie that is being shot that jake is in but that's not clear for a while so it just seems like jake is just like in this sex club wearing glasses and there's someone singing directly at him or like at us even yeah and i'm like is this a fantasy is this what is happening is this like him going to a sex club for research like it's not clear what's happening and then you're like oh i guess this is part of the porn movie yeah sure but you don't see the cameras until the actual sex scene so it's like right what that was the best little 30 seconds though or something i really enjoyed the porn musical it is fun if i saw that without context for what the movie was i'd be like yeah 100 great yeah yeah exactly looks like a cool movie yeah so that

is body double let's take another break and we will come back to discuss. Daphne Caruana Galizia was a Maltese investigative journalist who on October 16th, 2017 was murdered. There are crooks everywhere you look now. The situation is desperate. My name is Manuel Delia. I am one of the hosts of Crooks Everywhere, a podcast that unhearts the plot to murder a one-woman Wikileaks. Daphne exposed the culture of crime and corruption that were turning her beloved country into a mafia state. And she paid the ultimate price. Listen to Crooks everywhere on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. To listen to new episodes one week early and 100% ad-free, subscribe to the iHeart True Crime Plus channel, available exclusively on Apple Podcasts.

I felt too seen. Dragged. I'm NK, and this is Basket Case. So I basically had what back in the day they would call a nervous breakdown. I was crying and I was inconsolable. It was just very big, sudden swaps of different meds. What is wrong with me? Oh, look at you giving me therapy, girl.

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horror thriller from Blumhouse Television, iHeartRadio, and Realm. Listen to Dream Sequence on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And we're back. Alright. So, where shall we I think that maybe

starting with a little bit of De Palma context, we'll kind of set up the rest of the discussion, because I do feel like there are people who get, I mean, I feel like this is true of all like auteur directors but like I feel like this like this group of guys specifically people um really get you know their holes get all tense if you don't love it which we've been dealing with this for years but I just wanted to like start by contextualizing where this comes in his filmography and what he said about the movie because I do feel like it kind of like neutralizes any film boy like right it's actually good I'm like I don't

even think Brian De Palma thinks that uh but go off um so this movie comes in like like you said shereen comes right after scarface it also comes um within a few years of his other major hitchcock ripoff which is called dressed to kill i haven't seen it oh i have seen that very hitchcock ripoff so it's basically a ripoff of psycho that there's been a lot of discussion around it's very very problematic you should have to watch it eventually just to understand how weird it is right like there's there's a very like it's about a trans person who is a psychopath murderer so you know look there's been that's a separate episode michael cain michael cain right that movie gets brought up in Disclosure I think yes yeah yes okay that's how I know it okay yes exactly so that's like the era that he's in at this time and I think we should

just cover Dressed to Kill at a different time um because we don't really have the bandwidth for it today but so that's like sort of where he would like he's he's trying it not to be like completely reductive but it just seems like he's kind of going for like edgelord hitchcock vibe at this phase in his career like post production code hitchcock where he's like well i can make a hitchcock movie but now really sexy and really like gratuitous nudity and violence and violence toward women i could make it at any phobic you want right transphobic homophobic yeah misogynistic whatever you whatever you want it's you can do that now um not not us like i mean not advocating for the fucking production code but like this is like kind of was where he was at at this time yeah i feel like it's interesting where a lot of movies we talk about

from this era are considered to be very sexist in retrospect this movie was also considered very sexist when it came out which i i think is like kind of unusual especially i mean whatever we've covered a million movies from the 80s and 90s i was i mean i'm surprised to hear that right like you i i honestly uh i don't trust uh people from the 80s but there was a big backlash to this movie when it came out it was not a hit it was not reviewed well at the time so let me see okay so uh vincent canby of the new york times says de palma quote again goes too far which is the reason to see it it's sexy and explicitly crude entertaining and sometimes very funny and then he just says like it's a sexist ripoff of hitchcock so it gets like very very mixed reviews uh the biggest point of contention when the movie comes out is the drill scene which we'll talk

about but like that gruesome a murder of a woman who we barely know and barely get to hear speak also bothered viewers in the 80s it sparked a lot of feminist backlash as well but that was what bothered them the most i didn't realize i mean i i know it's bad but if that's the one that the thing that bothered them the most it's kind of weird to me but continue yeah that that is like where the focus of most of the criticism like there's a lot of people that were like they lost me at the drill

and not at the peeping Tom which I feel like is the right exactly yeah the drill isn't exactly like misogynistic per se it's like gross but right i don't know whatever okay so and then as far as what de palma says about this stuff i mean he's like i remember watching this came out maybe like five or six years ago there was a documentary about his work where he was interviewed it was made by like noah bombach and he was asked about how he

frames and portrays women in his work because uh a lot of people i think correctly think that he's really bad at it uh and what he now so de palma is kind of well I'll just read the quote but like kind of deflective and like the sort of thing where you're like you can tell when like someone's been asked the same question and they like maybe secretly know they're wrong and they're like oh this question again and it's like yeah you've never answered it um okay so here's what he said a couple years ago to Entertainment Weekly about body doubles specifically. He says, quote, I've been dealing with this all my career. Fortunately, now Quentin Tarantino has to deal with it.

So I don't have to deal with it anymore. Violence and women. He's the director who has the biggest persona in that area. In fact, we had a conversation about it once, which was funny. I say the same thing over and over again. If I can create a sequence where you're gazing at a woman or following a woman, it seems to me like a basic building block of cinema. I think it was Jean-Luc Godard who said, the history of cinema is men photographing women. I mean, look at advertising. Every magazine cover is a woman. It draws the gaze of a man and the gaze of a woman who's looking at what she's wearing. We look at women all the time. Look at the red carpet and can. All they do is

take pictures of women and it dominates the coverage it's so obvious to me it's not something i discovered unquote so i feel like he is like pretty blatantly like wow yeah everyone's sexist and that's why i am like that's kind of like what a good defense yeah i mean i just looked up i was i went on his wikipedia i was curious about like his romantic life. Nothing weird there. But there is a quote that I'm seeing on his Wikipedia because he responded to these accusations saying, I'm always attacked for having an erotic, sexist approach. Chopping up women, putting women in peril.

I'm making suspense movies. What else is supposed to happen to them? Yes. Yeah, that's another one. That's so oneself he's extremely like learning about his attitude towards the subject made me like the movie even less because i thought like i mean there's nothing to be said for being openly misogynistic but it is a little bit surprising yeah to hear someone not even bother to make up a weird lie about it i guess

i appreciate that he's like yeah i'm sexist take it or leave it but and a lot of people take it take it which is but but people think it's like this reflective self-conscious awareness thing that's the thing that he that that is most of his defense right for other from other people anyway but right so yeah like all the all the defense I was reading of this movie rests on Brian De Palma being aware of things that he is saying he doesn't care about. So

I just feel like, you know, whatever, it's a movie, think whatever you want. It's not a particularly influential movie and I'm happy for that. But yeah, I feel like he's basically given you all the information you need yeah he's given us all the clues Mr. Policeman Mr. Policeman much like Jake Scully so anyways that's that's the context of the movie and it made me really um dislike dislike brian de palma personally seriously yes right because so this movie can basically just be

summarized as a movie about a man leering at a woman without her knowledge or consent following stalking eavesdropping on this woman stealing her underwear like all this stuff and of course this lends to a lot of leering male gaze cinematography maybe more so than in any movie i've ever seen yeah yeah which like you could argue matches up with the leering and peeping that jake is doing so that's why the choice is made but like that just means like you just made a movie about a man leering and that's you made a movie about a sex offender right and why are you doing that without making any actual commentary like you're just following a sex offender go about a sex offender things like

right a sex offender who is like certain he's not a sex offender which the movie does not do very much to push back on i feel like the most the movie does is have the detective repeatedly be like what's up sex offender and and a few moments with hot with holly where she is correctly like you need to get away from me yeah you're a creep but like but i don't i still think the movie is essentially like i don't know it seems like the movie is kind of behind him definitely because i think when the cop challenges him and calls him a sex offender and a pervert and a peeping tom and all that stuff i think this is the movie just framing the cop as being an obstacle for the protagonist who we are supposed to be rooting for more than the movie actually making any commentary

on stalkery, sex offender behavior. Because again, this character who is stalking and peeping and doing all manner of other horrible things this is the guy we're supposed to be rooting for and even though he's doing the same exact thing as what the antagonist is doing it's because jake's intentions are like quote unquote noble pure and like to keep a woman safe and like all this stuff yeah it's actually fine that he's a stalker according to the movie and like you mentioned shereen like the movie does all these things to frame jake in such a way that we are meant to sympathize with him because yeah he got his heart broken by his cheating girlfriend he got fired from the movie that he's on he has childhood trauma and claustrophobia, like all of these things that are there to make the audience empathize and sympathize with him. And he is like trying to save women in peril from this quote unquote evil Indian.

And he's this, you know, quote unquote safe white man. And there's a whole conversation to be had about that but he has these intentions of oh no i'm only stalking to save this woman from this other stalker and that's what the whole movie is predicated on and i do hate it yeah i think yeah yeah i think two things one he gets everything he wants in the end so obviously it's like you're meant to root for this person that like gets his career back also holly is on set when he is shooting this so it's like presumably they've made up right maybe they're even fucking i don't know oh wait i didn't even notice that yeah she's behind the camera she's there oh yeah yeah and the other thing is it's

not like novel but two people can be creeps and if one is ugly that's the bad guy you know what i mean like i think someone not being like hideous and being white and like kind and quotes looking like i think that gets such a pass and because the other guy is like hideous to look at it's obvious to be like oh that is the bad guy and i think that is where some people's wires get crossed because they're like well that guy he looks like a good person he's trying to protect her but if he looked ugly you wouldn't think that right i don't know and it's like it's the it's the steve buscemi principle it's the steve buscemi effect and it's also like i don't know like again i just don't see the argument for

like this being commented on in the movie because it's like he wins in the end and it's like i i don't know i mean i try to like engage he gets everything he wants yeah like he he ends up fine even though and then there's this kind of like bizarre complicated like interaction with once he gets involved in the porn industry i feel like it's almost like conflating what Jake does, which is sex crimes, with the porn industry. Where there are certainly ethical issues and there's plenty of reporting about how performers are not kept as safe as they need to be. And there's certainly a lot, but it, it just, I feel like generally casts the entire industry as like hedonistic and debaucherous and the same thing as being a peeping Tom essentially. And like,

that is like super reductive, especially when like Holly is like the only character of any gender in the movie who seems to have like a shred of dignity. Like she's, I really liked when because she's brought into jake's life under false circumstances like he is lying to her but in that first scene where they they go to the bar together after the shoot she like states her like baseline right away and she's like this is how much money i make this is what i will do this is what i won't do these are non-negotiable things what do you think and like that's kind of your

introduction to who she is and so of all the things in this movie i fucking really don't like i did like that she i mean she sees jake for who she is even if the movie doesn't share that opinion or whatever and she also like knows what she is willing to do and not do like she's very like firm and in who she is and again it's like it's interesting and again it's like whatever i know we can't say like what the movie's opinion is explicitly but i liked seeing a porn star you know be portrayed as someone who was like in control of their life and like because that's like very often the case and I feel like they're rarely portrayed that way in media and but then every other character outside of Holly in the movie

is not portrayed that way at all and so you're just like what i liked holly a lot i didn't like that she appears to stay in jake's life after because like you're saying the last time you see her she's hiding from him in a grave so like under what circumstances did they overcome that i don't know but i liked that she told him to fuck off kind of at every appropriate turn right but then the movie forces them together in some regard in the end anyways right i think it was confusing though because at first i thought of it as a continuation of his fantasy because it was because we had just seen the fantasy of him being able to do the coffin scene to be able to get out of the grave and so part of me was like is this a continuation of that timeline or like what he wants like i wonder that too yeah but the movie doesn't set up enough of a precedent for him

having these fantasies really that it was clear whether or not that was a fantasy yeah because there's that other scene that we already talked about where we're like is this a fantasy or no where he's kissing gloria on the beach and that turns out not to be a fantasy so i don't know so unclear it's confusing it's and the way okay and then gloria's character as we've been talking about throughout can't make heads or tails of what's going like what truly written to be oblivious yeah just like a waif like hot white rich lady who cannot we were just talking about this I mean in a very different movie we're talking about the 40 yearyear-old virgin. But, like, a character who is, like, so aimless and underwritten and horny that they don't notice home intruders. Right behind the door.

She glides by him at every moment. He's just, like, there's one moment where she answers the phone and he's literally, like, two feet behind her. And she just doesn't see him because her back is turned. It's so bizarre. And it's the same thing with jake when he's standing right behind her like above he's like looming above her on the balcony at the beach shortly before they're making out for no reason and you're just i that is really starting that trope is really starting to bother me um hot woman with no spatial awareness and you're just like yeah oh my god that is like right most marginalized people are like

hyper aware of who's around them because you would have to be you have to be for your own safety this is something that i've talked about a lot especially in horror movies where i feel like i'm victim blaming because i'm like how did you not notice this or why did you do this thing to get you killed it's not a real person it's a brian de palma person right but it's always characters female characters written by men who are written in such a way that they're oblivious because it serves the story and not because that's how anyone actually behaves in real life the same thing with like the she leaves like an eight inch gap in the curtain of the dressing room right you wouldn't do that not because anyone does that but because the movie needs to allow jake to peep on her as she's putting

a new pair of underwear on like i just i hate it and i and i hate i hate that i am doing this kind of victim blamey thing but it's not it's not victim blamey if it's written that way right like right i think like the men are writing them in a way that they have experienced life yeah i still always feel weird about it but yeah it's it's like i'm blaming these female characters who don't actually exist and who are underwritten by right men who don't know how women actually behave and don't know that we are constantly on guard for our own safety at every waking moment that we're terrified of them yeah yeah or not even or like yeah that it's

like not that we're terrified of them we're actually in love with them which is one of the fucking scariest things you can perpetuate in your mood like i know a million people who have experienced shit like that of like a creepy person who like is convinced that you know exactly who they are and you're just like playing hard to get. And someday you're going to be together and it's going to be very romantic and cool. And it's like that is just like not really a thing that happens. But perpetuating it puts women in danger all the time. Like, I don't know. I've been in situations like that. Like, and it's always very, I can't believe that wasn't a fantasy sequence.

Like, both from like a writing perspective and from like a Bechtelcast perspective, is just like what the fuck like what and it also like I don't even really know that it like moves the plot forward in any way for that to be true like I feel like the movie could yeah like the movie could play out the exact same way if that didn't happen totally yeah yeah right like but I think it added to this illusion or this lie that he's this like amazing lover that women want to fuck you know what i mean like i hated that element of his character very very much right because it just it it further just establishes him as a likable and empathetic character or a character who we are supposed to empathize with right because oh if he look at him go he's he's a sex pot and he makes women

come and isn't that cool and it's like first of all no he doesn't and secondly he's a fucking creep right like yeah it's just oh god i hate this movie so much it's so frustrating and yeah whatever i like i'm trying to think of other like, I mean, I mean, it's interesting because I feel like not even that much happens in this movie. It's two hours long. No, but there's just it's all very at least an hour of it is just shots of Jake following a woman like there's very little. And then she's brutally murdered. Which, Shereen, I agree with you. Like, yeah, because I like i mean look i'm i'm a

soft franchise head i like to see someone die in a brutal way i don't like to see a character i know fucking nothing about who i've never seen make a shred of sense in the entire movie brutally murdered with a drill but you also kind of don't see her brutally murdered with a drill i think it is far more disturbing just to see her followed around like i felt more nervous watching her be followed for an hour by multiple people than watching her get murdered by a drill and i don't think that's an unpopular opinion unfortunately yeah because one of those things happens all the time i don't know peeping truly fucking terrifies me because you know what happens all the time and yeah you can also say the drill is like phallic as well which is also like another layer of like

i'm sure some film studies professor is talking about that right now to his class someone's just like exactly um i don't think this film even had a chance or like gave itself a chance of passing the Bechdel test. Like there's two women that we see in the movie. One of them is very like has two words that she says and the other one. And then gets murdered. Yeah. And then the other one isn't introduced until an hour into the movie. And she.

Oh, she does. Well, we'll get to this. But the other major topic of discussion for this movie is and kind of going back to what you were discussing, Shireen, about the well, one of these stalkers is, quote unquote, safe because he's classically handsome. And then also, is he? Sorry, but he's not hideous. I don't think he he's handsome but he's like not he's he looks like a good guy like in quotes you know what i mean right right he's not being othered he has these like down slanted like puppy eyes or whatever he does have like a kind looking face he looks like a little dog to me yeah yeah yeah and bill maher i think i think i'm just reacting to him looking like bill maher yeah that it, it continues to be very distracting. But the audience is he's framed in such a way by the movie by the filmmakers to be, you know, the the handsome,

safe white guy. And then the other stalker, who the movie telegraphs to the audience is evil, and he's the stalker you have to be scared of uh and then he has come to known as the indian and for a large chunk of the movie we are led to believe that an unnamed indigenous man is a creepy stalker murderer which obviously has very racist and harmful implications that you know like as a woman and as a white woman especially right that's the type of person that you have to be afraid of these non-white strangers who lurk in the shadows even though statistically and we've talked about this all the time not the case women who are survivors of assault or who are stalked and murdered are usually done so by people they know and often

it's their own partners which turns out to be true in this movie because the indian quote unquote is just her husband in a mask but the movie is like not operating on a high enough level to like be able to land that point right it could have been an interesting point because i feel like that scene with the detective there's just like so much going on there but i feel like one of the reasons that he lets jake go other than the fact that he doesn't care about uh women uh experiencing harassment and murder obviously is that he is you know like many cops and just many people in general he's like well normally i would go after the husband on this one but you said that it was an indigenous man and i believe that and it's like well why do you believe that even though

there's literally no proof of it because cops are racist and it's like that could have been a point that the movie could have made but it isn't because it's like every i kept wanting to think that this could be making some sort of commentary but it's just like it just never ever was because when you hear that character being referred to as the indian it's accepted as a truth across the movie across the cast to the point where like even the guy wearing this mask refers to himself as the indian and so you're just like okay so this is just something that the writers of the movie believe is true like yeah it's it's not making a point that like this character is racist and that is why this is being accepted as the truth it's just like yeah

perpetuating a racist trope but like yeah you're right there they didn't give it a reason like the movie as it is now there is no reason he needs to be indian not that he needs a reason but if he was if it was pointed out to be a larger commentary, at least there would be like an indication of why they even had to make him not white or something. Right. But the fact that it's just like sprinkled in and just presented as, yeah,

like you said, like all the characters think it's truth immediately. No one questions it. It's just so disturbing. I just, it's almost as if the writers just think this is true yeah the movie is operating on the assumption that the audience will have no trouble believing that yeah some random stalker guy unknown to the victim is just peeping on her stalking her and

then will later kill her because he is non-white and it's just like which i'm sure in the 1980s would have been true like it's so i've just i mean i'm just speaking of like the racism of 1980s america like i'm just saying like i don't even think that this would have been a particularly offensive take in 1984 right right and yeah i think the movie is just operating on that well of course the audience will be like yeah it was this right like he did witness this you know this indigenous man murdering this woman because that's how little uh audiences of the 80s thought of non-white people so that fucking sucks i apologize for making us watch this movie i just need to say that no i mean i had no idea what this was about i just thought

it would be a fun ride i mean maybe it was worth it for that porn musical scene but uh no don't apologize i mean we were going to cover it eventually. And we've gotten this request a bunch of times. It's always kind of fun when we cover a movie from our popular request list. And then we immediately realize why people have been requesting it because they're like, oh, they're going to hate this. You're like, oh, that's not nice. But yeah, we sure did. We sure did hate it.

I mean, my curiosity is satisfied. I've been curious about this movie i know what it is now and i will forget about it hopefully in a week you know what i mean like i yeah fortunately i don't think this movie is uh gonna stick with me no yeah does anyone have anything else they want to talk about um no but i mean to your point though it is nice to watch a movie that was not bad and then immediately talk about how bad it is with other people you know what i mean like it's like nice to like bash a movie and then uh move on other than it's sitting with you

and lingering thank you yeah for the podcast that's what i'm saying i love hating movies it's i love hating movies almost almost as much as i love loving movies so i'm not mad about this i love watching a terrible movie that i hated and absolutely dunking on it yeah so mel melanie griffith deserved so much better truly bless her yeah and so this movie like it's this is also i, an entirely white movie. Yeah. On top of having a very racist plot point. I don't think I saw anyone who wasn't white in Los Angeles.

On the set, there's one black guy that drags him out of the coffin. He's like, oh, get rid of this person. And the black guy is just like obedient and follows the crew member, which I thought was just like, this is the one person of color you put in here. And he's just like, I don't know. Barely has lines. And then he's forgotten about. Yeah. Yeah.

So I just, yeah, like, this just feels like all the bad tropes associated with this era of filmmaking, plus more, which is wild. I really hated this movie. And it doesn't pass the Bechdel test. There is a scene where two women, and I think the other woman is wild. I really hated this movie. And it doesn't pass the Bechdel test. There is a scene where two women, and I think the other woman is named. It's that scene where Jake is with Holly Boddy. They run into another actor that Jake has met and worked with before. They do talk to each other about a role. But there's a misunderstanding because Holly thinks that the other woman is another porn star this other actor is a non-porn actor and thinks that holly is a non-porn actor and they but they

never it never gets cleared up but they do talk and i would probably i completely forgot about that oh no does that mean it passes i think it might pass because they talk about like movies and acting and roles and stuff a man gets mentioned and they're also like i'm so mad that this passes but it's also like a woman who's we only see in that one scene also you could cut that scene from the movie and it wouldn't really it wouldn't make a difference it wasn't essential yeah you could cut that scene yeah so it's i i guess you could make the argument but i still say it doesn't also based on vibes alone sometimes you make a vibes exception sure but also like even if this does pass it doesn't mean that the movie is like any better or a feminist masterpiece or anything like that it just means that i know i just don't want to give it anything true just means that brian de palma gave one more woman three lines and called it a day

that's yeah he's like and i and and that's inclusion and let me pat myself on the back about it progressive hero brian de palma she has darker hair so diversity is a girl is a woman with darker hair that's what that is um so that's that's the back to uh how about our nipple scale where we rate the movie i forgot about the nipple oh yeah we saw a lot of nipples in this movie too we do see a lot of nipples and yet i don't have any for it no because we rate the movie on a scale of zero to five nipples based on how we think the movie does when looking at it through an intersectional feminist lens. And I would give this movie zero nipples. Same. Because of everything we've talked about.

It's just a movie that sort of revels in a woman being stalked and peeped on and murdered and again more male gaze cinematography than i've seen in any other movie and that's like that's a bar to clear that is a bar to clear it's all like leering shots like the longest shot I've ever seen on a boob. Like it just, I just, I've never had so much attention on a boob for so long. And it is like a very like headless woman of Hollywood thing where even though we see that woman's face briefly, it does like tilt down to her chest and lingers there for a very long time. And then the whole rest of the movie is just a woman being leered at through a telescope or a woman being stalked or a woman being lied to. And that's the premise of the movie.

And it sucks because it's like, we have like, and this is not like an indictment against movies with erotic themes. There's plenty of like erotic movies that fucking rule it's just like the way it's bound framed and who's looking at it yeah we just covered bound that's an erotic movie the fucking rules i like that movie it's good i mean it's really fun

but it's like yeah it's all about like who is looking what are they looking at and is their consent implied and in this movie it's like no no no no no all the way yeah across the board so that sucks and it's racist and zero nipples yeah and i hated it zero nipples really had an unfortunate time i want to give it a half nipple only for melanie griffith and like her i did like her character yeah it wasn't totally terrible but that she's the only reason i would even consider giving this movie any praise it's bad it is a bad movie yeah and it's so long it felt so long it's very long and it feels longer than it is because so much of it is just like boring shots of a woman being like people walking and one person following another person while they're both walking and it's like snooze the last thing i'll say is that uh diploma did want a porn actress to play the part of holly originally

which i think is like actually pretty interesting but then um the producers slash studio were like absolutely not we won't release the movie which is just another indication of the attitude towards porn actors at this time um but he did have someone in mind and like i guess like had the idea for this movie when he was interviewing janice dickinson's body double from um what's that movie that we were talking about that's really really transphobic and bad oh uh Dressed to Kill Dressed to Kill um but yeah he did want to cast a porn actor but then um Mr. Hollywood said no no I'm honestly surprised that in Body Double Melanie Griffith's character wasn't written to also be in on this like murderous scheme,

which is something that would have like further demonized, you know, sex work and porn work and stuff. And I'm surprised that didn't happen, which is just indicative of how movies like this, especially from this era, viewed sex work and pornography. And then I think it is like a little complicated by the fact that because jake is so awful but the movie doesn't think jake is awful and jake ends up becoming a porn actor so i feel like the movie isn't anti-porn really like but but that's like a fucking weird math problem that i don't really want to do yeah absolute last thing because i

thought this was funny I was like was this movie nominated for any awards and I feel like there was some justice here because De Palma was nominated for the Golden Raspberry Award for worst director oh my god for this movie yes and Melanie Griffith was nominated for a Golden Globe. Okay. Hell yeah. For playing Holly. That is justice. Yeah. So I was like, okay. But this movie has like a 76 on Rotten Tomatoes, but it also was a flop at the box office. So that makes me feel good.

Yeah. I don't think it's, I think it is like a hot take to like this movie then and now. And we don't have a hot take. I think we have the general take which is that um i don't want to ever think about it again uh shereen thank you so much for coming back and bringing us this awesome movie oh you're so welcome jamie and caitlin uh this was fun though thanks for thanks for having me back i'll i'll come back anytime maybe i won't choose the movie but no this was good i'm glad that we got to vent about it because i had so many i had watched it

last night and i was just like having so many thoughts and i was like what was that what did i just see it is it is very cathartic to air your grievances about a movie that you hate it really was and i feel like now we can forget about Brian De Palma for another two years. Exactly. And that's always a blessing. Yeah. Where can people follow you online and check out your stuff and plug away? I'm on social media, Twitter and Instagram.

My Twitter is shirohero666. And my Instagram is just shirohero i'm making a very big effort and i'm doing really well and not being online very much so i'm really out of the loop on a lot of things but i occasionally post stuff here and there if i'm spiraling and depressed so come along join the ride yeah you can follow us on those places as well instagram and twitter at bechtel cast you can subscribe to our patreon aka matreon where we do two bonus episodes every single month plus access to our our back catalog of 100 over 100 episodes this month it's minions march baby and you know what that means we're covering despicable me and the 40 year old virgin so it's actually um there's two options

you can call it minions march or you can call it gruella steve-ville or you can call it corella steve-ville because it's Steve Carell playing fucked up people. So if that didn't sell you on it, I don't know what will. I don't know what will. You can also get our merch at tpublic.com slash the Bechdel cast. And if you guys don't mind, I'm going to actually have my body doubles switch in for the next episode. They sound exactly like me, but they're not me. So it's like a voice double, too.

It's my voice double. Yeah. Yeah. Cool. Cool. Yeah. Well, I look forward to meeting them. Bye. Daphne Caruana Galizia was a Maltese investigative journalist who on October 16th, 2017, was assassinated. Crooks Everywhere unearths the plot to murder a one-woman WikiLeaks. She exposed the culture of crime and corruption

that were turning her beloved country into a mafia state. Listen to Crooks Everywhere on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. To listen to new episodes one week early and 100% ad-free, subscribe to the iHeart True Crime Plus channel, available exclusively on Apple Podcasts. Kay hasn't heard from her sister in seven years.

I have a proposal for you. Come up here and document my project. All you need to do is record everything like you always do. What was that? That was live audio of a woman's nightmare. Can Kay trust her sister, or is history repeating itself? There's nothing dangerous about what you're doing. They're just dreams.

Dream Sequence is a new horror thriller from Blumhouse Television, iHeartRadio, and Realm. Listen to Dream Sequence on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. MTV's official challenge podcast is back for another season. That's right. The challenge is about to embark on its monumental 40th season, y'all, and we are coming along

for the ride. Woo-hoo! That would be me, Devin Simone Simone and then there's me Davon Rogers and we're here to take you behind the scenes of the Challenge 40 Battle of the Eras. Join us as we break down each episode, interview challengers and take you

behind the scenes of this iconic season. Listen to MTV's official challenge podcast on the iHeartRadio app Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.